Our annual Festival of Children’s Literature is in full swing at The City School, one of the best international schools in Bangkok! This month we have an exciting array of activities and events to engage your children – and our families – in the wonderful world of storytelling, writing, and all things literacy. Our celebrations include a reading buddy programme with our older children visiting the younger years; ‘mystery reader’ visits from parents; an immersive AI story trail designed by Y6′ a ‘Reading Tree’ atelier installation; writing workshops; and finally, The Elephant Trunk Awards and our long-awaited Book Character Parade.
This week, we have been lucky enough to welcome two visiting authors to the school – Nawal Kalra and Edward Lee Fodi. Nawal has delighted our younger children from K1-Y2 with her animal stories, including ‘Not the Only Bear’, ‘The Dragon Went Hummmmmmm’, and ‘The Very Grumpy Sloth.’ Nawal inspired us to think about how we can create our own characters and stories and, in particular, invited us to engage in discussions about our emotions through her animal characters. Author and illustrator, Lee has written several middle-grade fantasy fiction books and is also co-founder of the Creative Writing for Children Society, a not-for-profit programme that helps children write their own books. For our Y3-6 children at our international primary school in Bangkok, Lee has been guiding us through the writing process as a journey, not just a final product, of sketching, brainstorming, and world-building, which has ignited the author in us all!
Our mission is to foster a lifelong love of reading, and our annual festival always sparks creativity and joy and allows us to go on wondrous adventures. In the words of one of our Y2 children, “My favourite thing about reading is it lets you go on vacation in your mind.”
#literacylove #creativeeducation
